His cardiologist friends assured him, however, that his arrhythmia was treatable, his yogic buddies maintained that his melancholy was ameliorable, his contractor pals claimed that his home was weatherizable, and his arborist chums swore that his tree was salvageable.
Everything can be fixed, they insisted. Everything can be made like new!
But very politely he has declined all their help. No thank you to the cardiologists, no thank you to the yogis, no thank you to the contractors, and no thank you to the arborists (one of whom even specializes specifically in decay-causing fungi). What point, they wonder, is he trying to make, exactly, by sitting in that cold house with that irregular heartbeat and that sad head, beside the diseased tree?
60: MASTERS
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A son who rebelled against his father, repudiated his father’s belief system, left his father’s home, and became after some time the disciple of another master, was distressed to discover that his father and his master had met each other, liked each other, got coffee together now at least once a week, and often went on little weekend outings around New England together.
He felt betrayed, of course, but also perplexed. He had selected this master precisely for the ways in which he was different from his father, almost his opposite. If they ever met, he’d once thought, they wouldn’t understand each other at all. The same words would mean something radically different to each of them. So how to explain all these classic New England outings? Three weekends ago: Newport, Rhode Island. This past weekend: the Berkshires. Clearly, they were able to communicate. Either his father and his master were not as different as he’d thought, or they’d forged a simple common language, a sort of pidgin tongue, that made these classic outings not only possible but actually pleasant, even delightful.
The moment he discovered his father’s Tanglewood ticket stub in his master’s recycling bin, the son knew the apprenticeship was finished. He renounced his master, repudiated his master’s belief system, and left his master’s home. At length he found a third master, one diametrically opposed to the other two. His philosophy was different, his concepts were different, his very vocabulary was different! There was, it seemed to the son, no common ground between them. Yet no sooner had he entered this master’s tutelage than the master met and hit it off with his father and his second master and all three went on a classic New England getaway, to tour the covered bridges of Vermont. The following weekend, they drove to the peak of Mt. Washington. The weekend after that, a quintessential New England outing to Martha’s Vineyard.
The son repudiated the third master and entered the tutelage of a fourth master, who only days later was enjoying lobster rolls with the other three in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
The son repudiated the fourth master and entered a period of self-reflection. He had sought a master nothing like his father, to furnish him with a philosophy unlike his father’s. Yet each successive master must actually have been very much like his father, and very much like the others, for how else to account for the fervor with which they explored New England together? Men with incommensurable and irreconcilable worldviews do not pile into a car together every weekend, or every other weekend, and drive for up to four or five hours to see the best of what New England has to offer, now lighthouses along the coast of Maine, now foliage in the Connecticut River Valley. Either, the son reflected, all masters were, by nature, men like his father, with the same values and the same pedagogies and the same notion of what a perfect New England weekend looks like — or else the only men who appeared to him to be masters were men like his father. In other words, maybe he was seeking out, without even realizing it, men of his father’s temperament, with his father’s philosophy, and his father’s eagerness to really get to know his pretty little corner of the country, with its interesting colonial heritage, and calling them “master.” Maybe that, to him, was just what a “master” was.
Either way, the son realized, he was on his own from now on. There was no point in becoming the disciple of another man who would only end up as another buccaneer of this little New England sightseeing brigade, which that very weekend was off picking its own pumpkins and gourds from a supposedly glorious pumpkin patch near Brattleboro, Vermont.
61: SOMETHING
TO GENETICS
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The son of the infamous Chessboard Killer, who killed his victims by pushing them into open manholes and tallied them by placing one pebble per victim on a chessboard in his apartment, vowed to save lives rather than take them. For this reason he became a nurse, the very converse of his father. However, as one pundit put it, “there must be something to genetics,” because at some point last year the son started murdering huge numbers of people himself, also by pushing them into open manholes. Just like his father, he kept a tally of his victims by placing individual pebbles on the squares of a chessboard.
62: ASSISTED LIVING
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The so-called Surrogate Sons Program at a Cleveland assisted-living facility has been altered to better suit the needs of its residents. In response to complaints that the frequency, willingness, duration, and mood of the surrogate sons’ visits were all undermining their authenticity, facility administrators have asked the surrogates to visit less frequently, less willingly, for shorter stretches at a time, and with more unspoken resentment and visible unease. During a meeting this fall, a number of surrogates shared tips on how to make the experience as realistic as possible. Mr. Solomon’s surrogate son likes to begin a game of Rummy 500 but leave well before either player reaches 500 points, with an excuse that cannot help but indicate the bustling, populated nature of his life. When Mr. Nolan’s surrogate comes to visit, it’s like he’s only interested in using the pool and sauna. “I wait until Mr. Nolan’s telling me about the moment in the 1950s when he realized communism was misguided, and then I suddenly ask how late the sauna’s open,” the surrogate shared. Mr. Wellerstein’s surrogate sends him an email every so often saying he might not be able to visit until March; when March rolls around, the surrogate simply doesn’t show up (or even send an email explaining why). Next time he emails, he just pretends like he never said anything about March. Soon he starts emailing about a potential visit the following March. On his comment card, Mr. Wellerstein rated his surrogate son experience a five (“Excellent”) and noted, in the space for additional comments, that he was “looking forward to March.”
But perhaps the most instructive case is that of Mr. Shapiro. Mr. Shapiro has not yet heard from his surrogate son, a silence that reminds Mr. Shapiro, he told administrators, of his actual son’s silence. Lately, when Mr. Shapiro, a survivor of the Leningrad blockade, cries out, terrified, in the night, he calls not for his son but for his surrogate son. The nonarrival of the surrogate son faithfully mimics the nonarrival of the actual son, neither of whom, according to Mr. Shapiro, can be blamed for leading a full life and being busy with career and family. His actual son once suggested recording an oral history of his father’s experiences during the Leningrad blockade, but he has not followed through on the idea and probably never will. The surrogate son has also, realistically, never recorded an oral history of Mr. Shapiro’s blockade experiences. The nonrecording of the surrogate is indistinguishable from the nonrecording of the actual. Mr. Shapiro rated his surrogate son experience a five. “What a splendid service!” he effused. It was only when administrators looked up his surrogate son, with the idea of having him speak at their fall meeting, that they realized Mr. Shapiro had not signed up for the Surrogate Sons Program and had never been assigned a surrogate. Still, they consider his case a model of what the program can, at least in theory, hope to achieve.